One of my abiding memories of going to the Bush on a Friday evening to see this production was our irritation at the draconian Friday evening parking regulations and driving around desperately seeking a legitimate space.
“This had better be worth it”, I recall Janie saying before the show, followed by “yes it was worth it” afterwards.
I can see from my diary and correspondence that we had an MTWD get together just before the start of the season – 28 March.
No sign of me going to the Seaxe Club AGM that year – I don’t think I’d really started going to those yet, but I did go to the Middlesex AGM on 11 April.
True to the committee’s requests, we did not report the AGM nor can I find any private correspondence about it. It cannot have been a corker.
A rare visit to the theatre on a Monday – this was Easter Monday.
Janie and I both love a bit of Tennessee Williams and we had only seen an amateur production of the Rose Tattoo before – at the Questors some 10 years earlier.
This was a top notch production at the National – no holds barred.
Zoe Wannamaker was exceptional.
Critics seemed to think the production and performances masked a less than brilliant play – I think I probably agree with that analysis – click here for a link to reviews.
Below is the trailer from the 1955 movie – very different style:
Sam Walters really had got himself locked into the early 20th Century by this time. Frankly, we didn’t think this Galsworthy piece had aged very well. Add to that Sam’s strict orthodoxy about not cutting text, it was quite a long evening at the theatre.
Well acted and directed, we stuck it out for both halves although we did consider making a break for it at half time.
Again, we really wanted to like it. We had loved The Island when we saw the revival of that one. But Sizwe Banzi seemed an altogether lighter and more dated work. The play has some great lines and some excellent points to make, but didn’t move us as we felt it should.
Yes, we were glad to have seen it, but it was a bit like seeing a band of ageing rockers whom you wished you had seen “back in the day”. The point was back in the day.
This was about a year after Janie and I visited Ethiopia, so I wanted John to experience Ethiopian-style eating and my description of it had sparked John’s curiosity to try it.
Me and our guide, Dawit, dining in Ethiopia, 2006, taken by Daisy
John and I had a good evening at Merkato – certainly I remember it fondly. We were in part looking forward to and plotting a gathering of the four of us (including Janie and Mandy) for a few week’s hence at John and Mandy’s place.
I remember us both finding this piece about low-level BBC shenanigans interesting and enjoyable – despite a suicide forming the denouement (that is not a spoiler). I suspect, given subsequent events at the BBC, it would seem tame and much beside the point today.
I think I picked up the terms “cruel spectacles” and “waning powers”, both of which I use a fair bit, from this particular show.
Great cast, with Ben Chaplin, Paul Ritter, Bruce Alexander, Angela Thorne and Leo Bill really standing out.
Well directed by Richard Eyre and produced of course to RNT standards.
I kept loads of notes and shall write up the events from those notes in the fullness of time. For now, here are links to the notes for those who can deal with exotic cyphers:
Janie was very keen to try the famous paladar, La Guarida, in Havana and had been much frustrated by our inability to get in, even for lunch, while we were in Havana in mid February.
So, before leaving Havana to tour other parts of Cuba, we booked ahead; a lunch at La Guarida for our action packed last day in Cuba before flying off to Jamaica that evening. Not the way we would have chosen to do it, perhaps, but as it turned out a very memorable and successful day.
Does Daisy look eager to go in or what?Is that a happy face chowing down or what?
But when I say memorable, what I mean is that we both remember the event so well. The name, La Guarida, for some reason keeps evading us both whenever we try to remember the name. I can remember that it was in the film Fresa Y Chocolat – you’d have thought it was easier to remember the name of the restaurant…
…anyway, this is what I wrote about the first half of that day – the Havana/La Guarida half:
Despite the late night we both rise early so we take a pretty ordinary breakfast and then (after a short aborted attempt to get money and water) we head towards Old Town, buying water and changing money on the way.
We have a quick look at the Cathedral and then the Museum of Colonial Art. We try to see the Wilfred Lam Museum but it is closed for refurbishment, so we visit the Taller Experimental instead & see etching turned into print and buy the pressing from it (from Pedro Redonet).
Back to hotel for tepid, feeble shower (water problems) & then “checkout” & get cab to La Guarida paladar for the last and best meal of our holiday in Cuba.
Ged started with marinated fish in a subtle herb dressing with avocado & tomato. Daisy started with tuna in sweet pepper with a creamy, tomatoey sauce.
Mains of grouper (Daisy) and swordfish with seafood sauce (Ged). Dessert of Fresa Y Chocolat ice cream (naturally as that film was filmed here).
Lingered over coffee and looked around the tenement-like building before strolling back to hotel.
Tiny place, tiny kitchen back then:
Talk about a galley kitchenStarters…yum.Would you like the tenement roof view or the tenement roof view, sir?Busman’s holiday for Daisy, this tenement, if she sticks around
